Subjectivity Isn't So Subjective

DISCLAIMER: I’ve never posted anything like this before, let alone in a place where I’ve read such great things. I’m trying this out to see what people think, and just for some experience. Bare with me.

I’ve read a lot of YouTube comments on music videos, movie clips, reviews, and other opinion-based media. Almost every single one that involves something popular has some sort of argumentation in the comment section. Someone who likes the topic of the video and someone who doesn’t are going at it like internet superheroes. But there’s always someone who jumps in at some point that says something along the lines of (or at least means something along the lines of), “If you don’t like it, just don’t watch it. We’re all entitled to our opinion, so there’s no reason to keep fighting.”

This is the essence of subjective ideologies. We believe that each individual has their own, subjective tastes, and that this determines whether we like something or not. So, we’re not required to like everything that everyone else does because we’re each entitled to our subjective opinion.

That’s interesting to me. There seems to be something inherently wrong with that statement. If you accept that two individuals can have contradicting beliefs and BOTH be correct, there is only one way I can see that ideology turning out.

There are obvious implications for morality here, like, if each culture is entitled to their own opinion/beliefs because these are truly subjective, then we should view our civil rights movement (as an opinion about how the state of the world should be) as an equally valid view as that of the KKK (who has their own opinion about how the sate of the world should be). But I’ll ignore these for a more personal, day-to-day, relevant use of subjectivity.

THE SCENARIO
Let’s go back to the YouTube video. Imagine it’s a Lady Gaga music video. Two people are arguing as to whether or not her music is “good.” One person, let’s call him Dick, likes Lady Gaga, and he is arguing with someone else, let’s call her Tori, hates Lady Gaga. This person comes in, let’s call them Pacifist, and says, “Hey, hey. There’s no point in fighting, guys. You each have your own opinion, and they are equally as valid.”

Dick replies with, “Okay, okay. I’m just going back to listening to music I like instead of fighting with this troll!” Tori proceeds to kick Dick in the dick and now Dick has been eliminated from the conversation, cause fuck that guy.

Tori turns to Pacifist and asks how they can be BOTH true. After all, does reality just show how two opposite things cannot be true at the same time? A person who has their hair on fire cannot also NOT have their hair on fire at the once. The same individual cannot be both in California in a bathing suit on the beach, and atop Mt. Everest in climbing gear in the snow (of course, I’m purposefully ignoring time-travelling, universe-hoping doppelgangers for simplicity). So, how can two individuals say, “This is good music,” and “This is NOT good music,” and both be correct?

PACIFIST AND SUBJECTIVITY
The character of Pacifist has an easy answer to this: the state of being of the music is determined individually by each of us. In the mind of Dick, the music was good. In the mind of Tori, the music was bad. Music, like many other things, is subjective from person to person, and what is pleasant to some does not have to be pleasant to all.

This is a very convenient answer. It encompasses a lot of the fabric of our social structure and ideological beliefs, such as those of individuality and independence, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc etc etc. But there’s something obviously problematic here.

Pacifist never answered the question. At least not outright.

THE PROBLEM WITH SUBJECTIVITY
If you believe that, to continue with our example, Lady Gaga’s music can be both “good” and “bad,” depending on who is listening, then what you are saying is that her music does not have those properties innately, but that we attribute them to it when we listen to it and decide whether we like it or not. That decision shows that Lady Gaga’s music does NOT have the property of being “good,” but it also does NOT have the property of being, “bad.” This conclusion allows people like Pacifist to say, “It’s just individual preferences. No one can say it’s bad if you like it, because it’s you who decides whether it’s good or not.”

But this sort of conclusion is a very shallow and unenlightened view of the situation. A sort of, “I heard this so I accepted it,” or, “I got this far and was satisfied so I stopped thinking,” perspective is being reflected with Pacifist’s statement.

The fact of the matter is that, if you accept that something does NOT have a negative or positive quality towards a certain situation (“good music” or “bad music”), then you must accept that when you say, “This is good music,” you are lying. When you say, “This is bad music,” you are lying, as well. You are forced to admit that the music you lie, is NOT good.

THE OBVIOUS REBUTTAL
The first response can be, “Well, I’m saying that it is good FOR ME, so I get around your nonsense.” But that’s still lying. If you KNOW that what you are talking about does not have the quality of being good, then you saying that it is “good for you,” is just straight-up lying, because you know better.

Some may reply by saying (and something along these lines is a better reply), “Well, if I say that I enjoy something, I’m not talking about whether it is good or bad, just that I enjoy it. So I get around your nonsense!” This sort of smart-ass response (I’m more confrontational to make myself feel better) just causes a different issue. WHY do you enjoy it? If it’s not good, how is it pleasurable, since pleasurability is a sign of “goodness?” That means it’s good, which means you reject the idea of subjectivity. But you don’t. Because if you did, you wouldn’t be going through the process of saying what you did to begin with.

The truth is, this kind of “enjoyment” of something requires a positive value to whatever it is you are enjoying. If you accept that there is no positive value (because you accept subjectivity), then you must explain how you enjoy something without a positive value.

Let’s be honest, anything you say will immediately attribute a positive value to what you are describing (like Lady Gaga’s music), and contradicts subjectivity. It becomes indefensible to enjoy music.

CONCLUSIONS
I’ve come to two conclusions that can be derived from these observations. The first is the more obvious one: I continue to accept subjectivity and refuse to enjoy anything that doesn’t have positive values (including music and painting and comics and novels). But this conclusion is problematic. Our experiences cannot be denied, and a positive experience from certain kinds of music is an obvious show that there is something to music.

That leads into my second conclusion, and the one I accept. There ARE positive and negative values for things. OBJECTIVE goods and bads. There is such a thing as good music and good art, and bad music and bad art, conversely. And It is our jobs as human beings with the capacity to understand such things to weed out what is “bad.” The problem has becoming the degradation of our ability to pick up what is “good” and what is “bad” because of our indoctrination by mass media. Things like MTV or Disney telling us what is good and what we should buy has clouded our judgment as to what is truly good music/television/writing/painting and what isn’t.

@sirensetmefree, omg i was thinking the same thing. but then i got high. so i thinked about it more. but then i got high. and so on. :P

So in my opinion this is what it is. You learn from expirience, aware of it or not. As a child you learned more (i guess). But then came “rational” part. Which is just applying expirience to new situations (real or imaginary, and by imaginary i mean like homework or your own ideas…). Which then creates our consciousness. So when we think hard and try to get deeper, were just applying more expirience to everything. So everything has so much meaning, everything is so connected. Why? Because they all explain the same thing but from different point of view, different expirience.

My problem here is that i dont know shall i go deeper of shallower. Anyway you cant get out of that thought circle. And no matter on what level of thought are you, youre always correct because everybody are talking about same thing. :P

@sirensetmefree, First of all, I would like to thank you for actually taking a stand on objectivity. So many thinkers here assume that everything is relative and we can make up our own standards for everything. That type of thinking doesn’t make sense if any two separate entities are affected in the same way by the same thing. (Think gravity)

The grounds for a relative idea of goods: Everything is different. Therefore, what is valued as good to some may not be valued as good for others. This shirt is good for me but it is not good for a bird. I think everyone here understands that in relation to yourself and in relation to others, there are things that are deemed arbitrarily good. This is the position everyone who is defending their thinking against you seems to take. That because we value goods differently from other things, there is no way that 1) Everything is objective and 2) There are no grounds by which we can determine and objective standard for goods.

The grounds for objective goods: Everything that exist is good in that it participates in existence. Things that are not real cannot be valued (valued can also be taken to mean loved) since they do participate in existence as well. You can’t say that you really value a thought unless that thought invokes a sense that it should be real and that it is good prior to coming into existence. Everything by nature of their existence (whether your a rock, plant, doggy, or human) values things that perfect their nature. We understand that surviving is a part of what it means to be real. To make choices, to laugh, to love, to play music or video games, to get educated. But all of these things can’t be achieved unless we’re alive. Meaning we would also have to value being alive as something good. If we saw death as being more valuable than living, there would be many more suicides. That also doesn’t make sense in that animals by nature (including us) value pro-creation as a means of actualizing our perfected nature. Once matured, an animal can mate and continue the nature of it’s own species within its offspring. What do you mean by perfected nature?(Thank you for asking)(lol =P) Everything that exist has a nature. Even rocks. Rocks gonna rock, right? Beavers gonna beave. Haters gonna hate. Within those natures, we interact with OTHER THINGS THAT EXIST in order to reach the height of our nature. This is usually measured in what something can do. We say plants are a higher being than minerals since as animate life, they can do things beyond the potential of rocks and minerals. Animals can say the same thing about plants. We can say the same thing as animals can in relation to plants about animals. And if you really want to “go there” God can say that about everything. You can see a progression in the order of Existence (see how that makes the name of the website make at least a little bit more sense?) What is objectively good is that which would be good for all within the same nature. This is why we value morality and virtue. These are things that by nature of THEIR being, they perfect our nature. When someone is courageous, it doesn’t just mean he’s willing to do what is necessary to perfect his nature (dare I say, “do the right thing”) even in the face of difficulty. It also means he has the prudence of being afraid of things worth being afraid of. (It doesn’t make sense to act tough in front of a meteor headed in your direction) There are different objective goods but being objective means to apply universally without bias. When we talk about which foods are good for people, we’re speaking objectively.

I hope this clears some stuff up for people. I’m sure people will deny what I’m saying but take a look at your lives. Which part of what I’m saying isn’t something you already know? I think everyone here gets it but because its hard to discern what may or may nor be objective, it’s easier to say that everything is relative and understand how a sense of duality captures everything within our experience. However, as stated before, just because YOU don’t experience something doesn’t make it any less real

P.S: Everything I said for the grounds on good was referenced from W. Norris Clarke. He references St. Thomas Aquinas. All three of us are theists (Catholic btw) I don’t see why you would give anyone any more or less respect simply because they think God does or does not exist.

now… “What is objectively good is that which would be good for all within the same nature.” This is my problem. You and I dont have the same nature. You look at animals on a level of species but thats wrong :P. Every living thing has its own similarities/differences with others. But it never has the same nature. Why? Because of expirience. Everybody has different expirinece (i mean on every milisecond of your life) so it creates different natures. Thats why one species can create 10 other ones. It all depends. This also applies on morality and virtue. It is only nature of some. Not nature of all. Thats why its all “relative”. But i hate that shit. “Relative”. Stupid. Fail in logic. There is no such thing as good or bad etc. Everything has no real meaning, only the one you give it. So i dont really like giving meaning to things :P

@bono95zg, I hear you my fellow HE nigga. But there IS objective good in the world. There is a relative, subjective element to our experience and then there is also the objective one. You’ve experienced hunger I’m sure. So have I. We’re both instantiations of the human genus and species. Alleviating that hunger is objectively good for you, me, and anyone else in the same experience. Yes, we all experience things in different ways at different times with different people at different places. But we ALL do that. One particular instance may be entirely subjective, but throughout history, I’m pretty sure you can get sort of like an existential average of everyone who has stubbed their toes and come to pretty similar conclusions. Full determinism eliminates free will. Free Will is subject to the agent actualizing it. They both put you in extremes but understanding where you fit in it is the actual free will. We all get to choose which experiences we want but we share those experiences with others choosing to do the same thing.There’s the big N nature (human nature) and the little N nature (your nature vs my nature) We still both have to objectively exist before we can compare them though.

@bearacleitus, you think that alleviating hunger is good, but that is only (not only you but surely not for all) for you. that is your expirience. maybe somebody wants to feel hunger, maybe it makes him feel good. its his nature :P. i mean if its bad, why is it bad? why would death of some living thing be bad? or good?

and there is no ‘human’. i mean im 100% into darwins shit. but categorization is only to simplify living world around us. species just imply life with similar caracteristics. every living thing is different. just beause they have some similarities doesnt mean they have same nature. if you wanna go that way you could go like this. monkeys have their nature and human is just intermediate stage in monkeys goal. but you can say same for monkeys ancestor. and so on. until you come to dirth, then atoms, then energy. and then to meaning of existence etc. so everything should have the same Nature. so whats ‘good’ for me it should be ‘good’ for everything that is. and how can something be good for atom?

and i ‘belive’ in full determinism and that free will doesnt exist. in my opinion full determinism explaines everything, you can fit anything into determinism. :P

@bono95zg, Uhh, it think its kind of hard for you to tell me that if your hungry, (at least YOUR body does) you don’t want to alleviate your hunger. Why is it good? For one, its a natural sign your body is giving to you to let you know that you need food. This prevents death and suffering and all that jazz. It also goes back to the original criteria stating that things that perfect your nature (both general and particular nature) are inherently good for you, even if you don’t participate with them. That’s where the choice comes in. 2) its also something we share with ALL other living beings. Meaning you are participating in something that every other living organism participates in by nature of being alive.A nature that while you and foxes and bears and insects and even bacteria are all different beings with different natures, all still share. I don’t see how you’re nitpicking over something as obvious as hunger. Now in the case of someone trying to fast, he is an example of someone trying to experience hunger. Maybe. I say maybe because you can fast and maybe not even feel all that hungry. You can fast for many different reasons and hunger may be one of those reasons but its not a necessary reason for you to fast. Also, just because it feels good, doesn’t mean it’s good for you. I’m sure there are plenty of recovering (recovered) heroin addicts that will tell you “Yeah, it feels good but it ruined my life.” (an example of something detrimental to the well-being of a human, therefore not an inherent good for humans) I’m sure you can find at least one example of that. In fact, I have talked to people like that so I can confidently tell you that’s at least a possibility. And just because it is just MY experience doesn’t mean I’m the only one who follows my Nature. Death is bad for a living being since it ceases to participate in existence and no longer has the ability to perfect its nature. It can no longer be determined what the nature of the living thing is since all we’re left with is a corpse. A corpse is the leftover body of a previously living thing, not the thing itself. Its a natural process so you wouldn’t say that a natural death is bad but the death of someone before they could reach that point shortchanges their entire existence.

Yeah, categorizing does simplify the world around us, so we can better understand it. Since you can categorize different things into general ideas of what that thing is, you now have a better position to understand what you don’t know. Your whole second paragraph ironically throws all of Darwin’s shit out. =P And yeah, species does imply life with similar characteristics, but then what do you say about different species? There must be a way you can distinguish this species from that species, right? Every living thing IS different, but their different within the realm of what they are. There are different types of foxes, bears, and bacteria within the fox, bear, and bacteria kingdom. Since every instance of life is so dynamic, there’s no way you can gather all the information about every specific instance of a particular living being. But that doesn’t mean I can’t feed two different dogs the same thing and get the same result. So yeah, BECAUSE they have such similar qualities, you CAN classify them within the same nature. Those classifications aren’t perfect but they give you a good enough idea of what your dealing with so that in every instance of that being, you have enough information to respond to it and have an idea of what the result would be. That’s the scientific method. =P

Your species’ natures are determined by your genus’. Meaning what you are in general (the more universal aspect of you) determines how you are in particular (the less universal aspect) When we take things to be true, we start with the most general universal things and work our way down to the particular instances. That’s what deduction is. Induction is the opposite but you can see how in induction, it’s a lot easier to come up with wrong answers. You can’t tell me that if your really into Darwin’s shit that you don’t see how he was able to develop those categories. And how the rest of the world was able to make use of his findings. Woah. That’s weird. People outside of Darwin using Darwin’s things. There’s no way that they could though because everything has a totally different nature from everything else in the universe! (Sort of, not entirely)

And that’s fine if you “believe” in determinism (which is an odd statement) but I would ask then how can you truly love someone? I don’t think I fully understand determinism so I would love for you to explain how can you have a meaningful relationship with someone else if you don’t have the free will to choose who and how you exercise that love?

@bearacleitus, alleviating your hunger is neither good or bad. Just because you will suffer or die it doesnt make it good/bad. suffering isnt bad. dieing isnt bad. that is just your opinion on that, your explanation of choise. its just another explanation. not more true, not less than any other. nothing is good for you because you dont know what are you supposed to be, or what will actions will make you ideal, perfect. this is why people have different opinions. they have different ideals, explanation on how everything works. so it causes different things to be good for them. so there is no right way to be living thing. think about it, but read this as all as one thought.

its doesnt throw evolution out. its explains it better. species are categorized to be observed, to predict or conclude something. but they dont exist in real world. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t feed two different dogs the same thing and get the same result.” ofc it means that. there is 99.999999…% chance that they wont be the same.

and whyt does it mean to truly love someone? why is love THE feeling? why is hunger not THE feeling?

@bono95zg, I’ve told you the criteria by which I’m judging suffering, hunger, and death. Why don’t you tell me yours because I don’t know how you are judging any of those things as being totally neutral from the things experiencing them. I guarantee that if you were to talk to a hunger person and a full person and ask if they would like food, they would give you two different answers. Why? Because in their current positions, they can both use food differently for different ends and both may still be working towards perfection. The hungry guy will probably eat the food to acquire the good of satiety. The full guy might give it to someone else, save it for later, make art out of it, or just throw it away. The only way you’ll be able to determine what’s good or bad in those situations is by first determining what both men are trying to aim for and how successful were they in attempting to achieve their goals. The same way you can judge what mankind in general is aiming for (peace, abundance, safety, fulfillment, ENLIGHTENMENT, health, education, love, friendship, virtue, solidarity, and more) is the same way you can judge what these men would be aiming for, only you also have to consider their particular circumstances which you would also have to do for mankind in a historical perspective..

I never mentioned evolution blatantly so I don’t see why you brought it up but in the case of the dogs, I’m pretty sure that if you feed your lab and your husky some Pedigree or Dog Chow or something, they’ll be nourished in around the same way. So how are you coming up with that pretty confident 99% that they won’t be?

That was also a good job at dodging the question. Let me rephrase it. What is love (lmao) in a deterministic world? I never said love was a feeling. I said it was a choice. And what do you mean by ” why is hunger not THE feeling?”

@bearacleitus, mankind is just categorization. u cant just look at one part of living world. you can either look at purpose (or whatever) of all, or just one. never your arbitrary choice of which ones to observe. u could look at what are 50 giraffes, 7 humans and 37 dogs aimig for, the same way you look at mankind.

dogs will never be the same in behavior… maybe very similar but never the same. just like humans are never the same.

and in deterministic world love is emotion, feeling, combination of it etc. so what i meant by “why is love THE feeling, why is hunger not it” was: why would love be more valuable then for example hunger? why would one emotion be more important then other? why to glorify just one and not all? what makes love so much more?

@bono95zg, I think for your first point you seem to be ignoring human history and everything that has resulted from that. That’s how I’m making my claims on top of a Thomistic/Aristotelian understanding of human nature. I strongly recommend reading anything by both of them, particularly Faith and Reason for Aquinas and Nichomachaen Ethics for Aristotle.

I don’t think I’ve ever said that one nature will be EXACTLY the same as another but you keep assuming I’m just pigeon-holing every instance of dog as every dog. I know that you can’t say everything about every instance of one species of being. I already said that. The categories are suppose to give you something to work with so you can work your way down (deductively) towards more information about any particular instance of a being.

Love is emotion, feeling, combination of it. Of what? Just straight up emotion? There are different emotions. You’re not saying what love IS. You’re just giving ways it manifests. (through emotion, feeling, etc.) The reason love is more valuable or a greater good than hunger is because love perfects nature. Love connects and motivates people and things to act in accordance with ALL of the rest of existence. When you love yourself, you show that by acting in ways that reflect that. (Exercising, eating right, educating yourself, developing virtue, participating in your interests, doing fulfilling work, etc.) What it means to love yourself is to WILL (which is why I still don’t understand how you can have love in a deterministic world if you don’t have a choice.) your own perfecting through your actions. When you love others, you’re willing the perfection of OTHERS through your actions. Which is why morality and virtue and ethics and all that shit is so fucking awesome because it gives you the guidelines by which you can properly express love. Hunger is a physical response to a lack of food (aka. energy) Alleviating hunger is a demonstration of self-love if for yourself or charity (which is another form of love) if you’re alleviating the hunger of others for the sake of their betterment. However, if you’re alleviating the hunger of others just show you can LOOK charitable, you’re not acting out of love. You’re acting out of vanity because what’s driving your actions (your intention) is not aimed so much at alleviating the hunger of others, (the object of your actions) <— ((The means by which you actualize your intention)), its to look like you CARE about alleviating the hunger of others, in which case, it is not a good action.

Emotions themselves are not qualitatively competitive. Anger is not more "valuable" than love or sadness. What's important is the tempering of those emotions and the actions they drive. If my anger leads me to save a person from being bullied but another person's anger drives them to kill another person, you wouldn't make a quantitative claims as to who's anger is more "valuable." You would say that one person's emotion was harnessed properly and another one's poorly based on the good their actions brought about.

Outside of the love stuff, it seems like everything else I've said and you asked about was common sense. I don't mean to be insulting but a lot of this stuff is apparent in everyday life. I bet when you think of college, you don't think that every college is the same, but every college aims for the same thing. Or the same thing with gas stations. Or roads. For as strange as it seems, the same applies to animals and humans and life in general. With artifacts, (anything man-made), WE impose the purpose that the thing serves. Whether its a hammer, computer, or cell phone. However, the same applies to nature. It's just we weren't the ones to impose the nature of a thing on anything natural. You don't HAVE to attribute it to God either. You could just say the universe did it. And the more information that comes out and is learned about religion, philosophy, history, anthropology, biology, chemistry, physics, etc, the more you can get an idea not so much how or why (though those are possibilities) things are the way they are but how you can make the most of the things that actually ARE.

@bearacleitus, ok we just have to agree to disagree beacuse … yeah :p.

only gonna say this.
“WE impose the purpose that the thing serves. Whether its a hammer, computer, or cell phone.” -true
“However, the same applies to nature” -true
“It’s just we weren’t the ones to impose the nature of a thing on anything natural.” -true

ofc we didnt impose the nature of a thing but whatever you say is trying to impose your explanation on what is the nature of thing. thing just is. meanings, explanations assigned to it or what is its purpose are human (as an adjective). so with more information (from religion, philosophy, history, anthropology, biology, chemistry, physics, etc) we are just explaining it with more expirience. but thats it. the first explanation is as true as the latest. no matter how “objective” the new one is.

@sirensetmefree, So, how can two individuals say, “This is good music,” and “This is NOT good music,” and both be correct?

Because they even out over a large spread of personal opinions.. just like statistics do..

”How could a man be falling off a rope to his right & simultaneously falling off of it to his left??!” …you may ask!.. well the answer to opposing forces working at the same time is of course the concept of balance..

@bono95zg, Anything that counts as Truth isn’t illusory. It’s eternal. Nietzsche’s cool but he’s also another modern philosopher that Truth was inaccessible. Everyone and their mom thinks philosophy starts with Descartes but Aristotle, St. Augustine, Plato, Socrates, and St. Thomas Aquinas (guys that not only thought some Truth was accessible but spelled it out for us) were wrecking shit waaaaaaaaaaaay before Descartes was doing anything and so much of what comes out of modern philosophy doesn’t make sense.. If you look up the definition for Truth or true, it doesn’t make sense to call it an illusion. That quote, if it can be counted as anything, is a testament to the limited capacities of the human mind. However, it’s more an opinion than a statement of fact.

Also, if you have read anything in history, chemistry, or physics, you’ll realize even if we come up with more information, it doesn’t always replace everything we have already objectively established. Whether or not you lived in the 12th century or now, the world was and is round. Before we could come up with a word for round, the earth was round. That’s pretty objective. So if the first explanation was that the world was flat, then it wasn’t TRUE (see what I did there?)

If you want to stop that’s fine but agreeing to disagree without coming to a solid conclusion about the topic (to me) is unfulfilling.

So, I haven’t been on this site for a LONG time. I’m going to respond to each of you as best I can without sounding repetitive (because I don’t remember everything that was posted earlier and it’s WAY too long to read).

@bearacleitus, That is DEFINITELY one of the ways I was looking at objectivity. We have certain properties as creatures. As such, we require certain things to survive, extend, or change those properties (like weight or anger or whatever) given what other properties you are using to interpret them (desires being the most notable). It is an objective truth that I have the desire to stop eating donuts. If someone asked you if I have the desire to stop eating donuts, you would say yes. Maybe YOU don’t want to stop eating donuts, but you know that I do, and it is objectively true that I do. And we can see how eating healthier (i.e. not eating donuts) points towards the perfection of my nature, or the further surviving of my nature.

Too many people take differences and decide that, because they can’t justify their belief or preference more than someone else’s, they must both be right (which I assume extends from our inability to admit we are wrong).

Premise 1: Everything has no meaning.
Premise 2: Subjectivity and objectivity is part of everything.
Conclusion: Subjectivity and objectivity mean nothing.

Explain to me why everything has no meaning. If your argument is ‘Everybody has different expirinece (i mean on every milisecond of your life) so it creates different natures’ I would say that’s wrong. I would say our nature is innate, our experiences change how we develop said natures, but that our natures stay the same. So, for example, I want to be healthier, so I eat what some people have said are ‘health foods.’ If I get food poisoning from one of them, my experience would not change my nature of being healthier, but rather, I would change what food I’m eating in order to continue to achieve my nature. It wouldn’t make sense to say it changed my nature.

@mynameaintavailable, That’s not how it works. Evening out in a spectrum just means there’s an equal number of people who disagree with each other, but that doesn’t make anyone’s opinion more or less valid. At some point, there existed more people that believed the world was flat with less people believing the world is round. At another point, there were equal people of beliefs (because that happens by pure nature of numbers as we transition). And now, there exist more people that believe the world is round. The statements can’t both be true, given the meaning of the beliefs. And the amount of people believing one thing does not validate that belief any more as the small amount of people believing something else de-values the other belief. If at any point, the spectrum balances out, that still doesn’t validate both beliefs.

My point is that we have created this world which is unmeasurable (subjectivity) because we don’t want to be told we’re wrong when someone disagrees with us. And to make things even, we don’t tell them they’re wrong, either. We just say, ‘Well, it’s subjective.’ And things like qualities are now unmeasurable because they are easier to disagree on.

@bearacleitus, “Everyone and their mom thinks philosophy starts with Descartes but Aristotle, St. Augustine, Plato, Socrates, and St. Thomas Aquinas (guys that not only thought some Truth was accessible but spelled it out for us) were wrecking shit waaaaaaaaaaaay before Descartes was doing anything and so much of what comes out of modern philosophy doesn’t make sense” <-Truth. LOL Okay, that's my opinion, as well.

@bono95zg, Truth and falsehood cannot be illusions. Even if it's metaphysical concepts such as numbers, 2 items plus 2 other items will add up to 4 items, all things being equal. That is an undeniable truth, and it is NOT an illusion. Similar, the existence of a rock in a certain area can be entirely true and not an illusion. What Neitszche means by his quote is the truth-value of statements that are unmeasurable through standard methods. My point is that there must exist a method to measure those truth-values that we are either blind to or ignore.

@sirensetmefree, for the first one… conclusion is correct :P
what i mean by expirience is everything that happens to you. ill try to desribe this somehow. if you have small sphere and in it nothing but (lets say) 5 atoms that were given a certain trajectory. but u have to look at all 5 atoms as one object, like a rock or whatever. and u let them collide a certain time. so they have a nature ie they have a goal to reach. if you take one of them out and set the same trajectory again, they will have different nature. the result will be different.
so everything u do changes your nature.

now on meanings… what is the meaning of a tennis ball? to humans it has a few meanings, but in reality it has no.

and for the second one… Plato’s “Allegory of a cave” explaines it better. Nietzsche was very influenced by greek philosophy, for that reason by Plato and Socrates.

@bono95zg, I’m familiar with Plato’s Cave Allegory and if you were, you would remember that the person who leaves the cave and understands the world for what it really is (dare I say, acquires Truth) tries to come back and help everyone else who thinks the world is just made up of shadows. And then they end up shunning him. (Kind of weird parallel, wouldn’t you say @sirensetmefree, ?) (lol) Plato says you CAN acquire Truth. Hence the analogy of the person at first being blinded by the light but after adjusting has a better sense of understanding everything else around him. However, he does think that this world is not the real world or something to that effect because of the Forms. I think it’s hilarious that you tried to use Plato to deny a sense of objective Truth, especially if you knew anything about his world of Forms or read the Symposium but I do see where you were drawing that conclusion from the shadows.

Also, your sphere analogy has no consistency. Why have the 5 atoms act as one object but then they collide against each other as if they were separate? What certain time would they be colliding? Just because you have a different result in the same experience doesn’t mean you have a different nature. Your nature doesn’t change every time you do something new. If you want a reference for this, look up Act and Potency in Aristotelian or Thomistic Metaphysics.

Side note: I think its a little funny that all you have to do is switch 2 letters in Metaphysics and you get Meatphysics =P

@bearacleitus, how do you know you are not the one looking at the shadows. You are limited by the environment around you. The Truth (if exists) it too large. There is always wider view, better explanation of world.

I think objects dont really exist (u know like oneness of everything) but for nature of thing there must be that thing to be nature. So i just tried to explain it that way, via atoms. When you have an object in space every atom in it is moving just very close to each other. So i think i can say what i said earlier. So u have the two same rocks (5 atoms with same positions and moving patterns or whatever). If you change one thing in one rock it will strive to different goal than the other one. So nature of the rocks is changing. If ofc nature isvstriving to what its supposed to be or something lile that :P

@bono95zg, The assumption is that, as far as we know, we are in the shadows, but our attempts are to getting out into the sunlight. The fact is that the person in the shadows is the one discouraging others from pushing away because of the possibility of them being in the shadows. Quitting because of a possibility is a much bigger issue than the existence of objectivity or not.

@bono95zg, I don’t see how you can say the Truth is too large but then speculate on its existence. If you know it’s too large, then you have it, thereby contradicting everything you just said. If you don’t have it we’re still having the same discussion but then you still have to address my first sentence.

Try to explain your rock example as carefully as possible because I’m trying to figure out what your saying but I feel like I’m missing something. You’re giving atoms will when they don’t have it yet somehow that disproves objects having nature.